Posts by Anonymous Bastard

Page:

Battery?

"The crystals, short chains of amino acids called peptides, can store a charge..."

I am not a chemist but to this layperson it sounds more like a hyper-capacitor than a battery, which would be consistent with other capacitor technology. It would also go some way towards explaining why the waste heat doesn't cause an explosion.

Also, I did not see any explicit mention of just how much charge is stored. I understand that battery meters assume charge based on the output voltage, rather than measuring actual joules.

For now ignore the cost to our freedoms.

What is the monetary cost of all this surveillance and how many lives has it saved? MI5's state this year's budget was £1991M (https://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/about-us/who-we-are/funding.html). They don't say which plots they have prevented so let's imagine a worst case scenario was stopped, one 9/11 type attack, the last of which accounted for 2996 deaths. This means counter-terrorism is costing us £644.5K per head!

Now compare that to the benefit of shelters for the homeless and abused, drug rehabilitation clinics, basic sanitation, flu vaccines, sexual health awareness, community policing, street lights (similarly more cost effective than CCTV), children's rights, ambulances and nuclear disarmament.

Worse than useless

The unscrupulous advertisers won't ignore the header, they'll make sure to add it to their profiling software. Now they have an extra field to track you by, one that'll identify the technically minded sort of person.

@magnetik

From your tone I take it you own a fleet of Ferarris and bought tablets as christmas presents for all your friends and family, only to find out they had already bought their own?

I predicted less than monumental sales rather than "nobody" buying any in the next year. I offered an anecdote of first hand experience, not "evidence". I did, however, see two Acer boxes carried out in the same time.

It's shameful to start a story like this

I was in Dixons earlier today and took a minute to watch the iPads. No one paid them any attention. None got bought. Despite being near the entrance everyone walked past them and went to the netbook/notebook section instead. There is simply not enough demand for tablets in the real world and I have seen it with my own eyes.

I surmise the initial rash of sales were from early adopters, apple fanbois and koolaid drinkers. Market watchers are keen to extrapolate the rate of growth to massive sales and profits but I can't see the average man on the street actually buying into it.

Free, except when it isn't free

Not all ads

I too am a NoScript fan and that's good enough. Without scripting the worst offenders - and infections - are dealt a hefty kick to the virtual nuts. And yes the decrease in load times is very welcome too. I'm so used to the slimline version of the web that it has become shocking to see what other people have to put up with.

Particularly on the Reg I am fine with the text adverts and occasional animated GIF. They're not so garish as to be distracting and they do serve a purpose after all, to pay for my favourite periodical. Long live El Reg! Love live saint Paris!

@BristolBachelor

I also read something like that where someone had done a load of research... Roughly speaking it has more to do with the height the toast is dropped from (about 5 ft for most people) than whether it is buttered or not.

+1 for "religion-bable"

For me, that was the sole reason for turning off after only a few episodes. The article says "It didn't preach" (first page) but clearly it did, just not in scientific terms. I was even going to put up with the notable lack of a theme tune until the machines started claiming to have found God.

"browser stats are notoriously inaccurate."

Not to mention w3schools is aimed exclusively at forward thinking webdevs who probably run Firefox just for the use of Firebug (I know I do). In fact I'm surprised their figures for Firefox and Chrome aren't much much higher...

Cute!

Why wireless?

The same argument could be said for wireless keyboards (and in fact, I do argue against them) but people do buy such keyboards for aesthetic reasons. Reasons that Apple have repeatedly proven they understand.

Batteries wouldn't be an issue if equipped with some form of near field power coupling. Of course that would need a specially constructed desk but any fanboi buying one of these would also be liable to buy certain fruit branded office furniture. Hmmm... I think I have an ambiguous and over-reaching patent idea.

Huhnke envisioned a blind curve, around which a car has broken down in your lane

"...Rather than merely speeding around the curve and plowing into the rear of that stopped vehicle..."

Rather obvious but what if something other than an intelligent car is in your path? A person for instance, one who hadn't yet signed all free choice over to the machines. Or a fallen tree or rock slide. To take this into consideration manufacturers will program their cars to slow down for blind corners and take other sensible, existing precautions - thereby eliminating the need for a hugely complex and vulnerable network of moving vehicles.

Also at fail is the very concept of sharing cars. Nobody wants to give up their favourite possession, we love our cars too much. Nobody will ever want to risk getting a car on saturday night with a puddle of someone else's sick in the back, or worse! Fleet companies will try to cut corners too by having only enough cars for average load, cue hour-long waits for your ride to find you.

Lastly how is a long stretch of open road supposed to be annoying? That's the perfect time to go really, really fast.

Re: "it might help stabilise the ship..."

Tomorrow's World

I seem to recall seeing a clever invention that would generate electricity when flexed. It was announced that a strip of this around the inside of a tyre would then be able to power a small wireless transmitter when the tyre started going flat. You see, although the flat bit is always at the bottom it doesn't stay in the same place relative to the rubber, so it is constantly bending as you drive. Measure how much electricity is being generated and you have a flat tyre warning.

Trojans need to be manually installed

Having developed for Android I know that non-app-store .APK files can only be installed by first tapping the "Unknown Sources" checkbox in "Application Settings" and then agreeing to the following prompt:

"Your phone and personal data are more vulnerable to attack by applications from unknown sources. You agree that you are solely responsible for any damage to your phone or loss of data that may result from using these applications."